The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is such a cosy, curl up with your cat and a cup of cocoa kind of book. … Continue reading Review: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
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Lifetime
We are all 13.8 billion years old. In our consciousness, at least. Not in these disposable meat sack bodies. When they first announced that, I’d just gotten off the tube … Continue reading Lifetime
Out Of Office
Thank you for your email. As of this Friday I am out of the office And will remain so indefinitely. I am sorry for the inconvenience caused, If you’re the one … Continue reading Out Of Office
An Ending
In the end, there was only a flooded planet and dying star.
“It was good,” the sun sank towards the sea, her former inferno reduced to a flame in the clouds.
“Perfect,” the sea rose to meet her. She was doused and the sea froze.
Across the universe: a spark, a droplet, a beginning.
(Clara, 280 characters)
Written for Twittering Tales.
AnaMia
She burnt away, rotting from within
Until all that was left was ceramic skin
Perfectly painted with only one crack
Just below the knee, a hole of deep black
The only blemish on a porcelain doll,
Showing inside she was nothing at all
But empty and hollow, full of dead space
A vacuous vacuum with a manufactured face
No love in her heart, nothing in her head
AnaMia’s glassy eyes already felt dead
But she still smiled a fixed, painted grin
Because now that doll was finally thin.
Via Daily Prompt: Thin
Black Noise
I don’t hear things like you do. I hear them in colours.
It doesn’t quite translate the way you think. White noise tends to be a little pink. Finding white noise that is purely white is as difficult as finding untouched snow in a playground. There’s too much going on these days- too many radio frequencies, too many phone calls- it pollutes it all.
Water tends to speak in violet and not deep blue like you might think. Stormy seas shout to me in a loud, purple haze. Blue noise is low and kind of unsettling. You can find it in small, glowing lines around wires. Electric blue, you might say.
If the world is a canvas, it was first painted green. Not just in the trees and plants, but in the background noise too. Man-made noises throw a lot of red and brown in to the mix. They bleed together a lot and it can get messy. I used to walk in the woods a lot, away from the city, to try and find that undiluted green.
It’s the only place I’ve ever seen black noise. And I haven’t been back since.
I suppose I had always known that it must exist. For white noise to exist, black must also, and so turns the colour wheel. I just hadn’t given much thought to what that might actually mean.
I was alone in the forest, enjoying the green, when I started to notice it get darker. At first, it turned to a mossy green, but then it grew darker still- like a terrible mould had spread across the forest floor, climbing up tree trunks and turning everything to rot. I couldn’t hear anything different, but the green was fading.
And then I saw her.
She lay motionless and pale beneath a tree, deep cuts on her arms and chest, at least one of them fatal. Her mouth was open in a scream and black noise poured from it.
Silence.
Black silence, the true colour of a sound that would never be.
Usually, when I do the daily prompt I google the word for inspiration. Just to see if there’s a way of interpreting it that I hadn’t immediately thought of, or if something else sparks an idea. Today I found this cool Wikipedia page on the Colour of Noise and it was really interesting.
Via Daily Prompt: Noise
On Repeat
The music crackles and he takes my hand for the very first time. The record spins, he spins me with it. We laugh. We dance. We kiss. His song is on repeat.
It becomes our song.
It plays at our wedding.
It plays our daughter to sleep. She plays it herself when she is sad. When she leaves home the house feels empty so we fill the rooms with music.
It plays as we grow old.
It plays when he is ill.
It plays at his funeral.
It plays when I get sick too.
The music crackles and he takes my hand for the very last time.
Apocalypse
The news screams of war.
Nuclear sirens and wildfires,
Flooded homes
Extremists taking their fight
To the streets.
I try to memorize the way you look at me
The way my name sounds on your lips
How warm you are, how safe.
Politicians in hot water
Displaced children
Without a home nation
On a boiling planet.
I might be holding you in the eye of the hurricane
There might be disaster at our door.
But I will remember this moment.
For when the world ends.
Before and After Me
A stack of photographs lie on the floor. I pick one up. A girl. She is smiling and she is happy. There is laughter in her eyes. She is loud and bold. She is bright and colourful. Vibrant.
She is me, but I hardly recognise her.
She is me.
Before.
I pick up the next one. There is a smile, but the eyes are different. She holds a knowledge in them now, a certainty that the world is little bit worse than she feared. Her light has tapered off.
She is me as I am now.
She is me.
After.
Recipe for Your Soul
Ingredients:
- 2 cups of self-raising determination.
- 2 cups of creativity
- Self confidence, beaten
- 200ml of love
- 1/2 a cup of insecurity (it will feel like more once baked, but that’s all I promise)
- A pinch of courage.
Method:
- Mix together all of the dry ingredients thoroughly in a large mixing bowl. Pour in the rest and beat yourself up.
- Put in the oven and turn up the heat. You might think you can’t take the pressure, but you can.
- Leave to cool when ready. You will become strong, but still soft.
- Decorate with icing if you like, but you don’t need it.
Serving suggestion: Give a generous portion to those who love you. Give none to those who do not deserve it.
Fragments of Fiction 